Different attempts of integrating virtual representations of physical objects into a virtual game play have been made. However, a close link between the physical world and a virtual game play stimulating the interactive involvement of the user and, in particular, stimulating the development of different skills by children's game playing is still missing. Therefore there is a need for a new approach to interactive game play.
Most toy-enhanced computer games or so-called toys-to-life systems currently involve systems wherein toys must have a physical component configured to communicate with a special reader via some form of wireless communication like RFID, NFC etc. Examples of such systems are disclosed in e.g. US 2012/0295703, EP 2749327 and US 2014/256430. It is generally desirable to provide game systems that do not require the toy to comprise elements that are capable of communicating with a reader device so as to be able to identify a toy element, and to create its virtual digital representation and associate it with additional digital data.
WO 2011/017393 describes a system that uses computer vision to detect a toy construction model on a special background. To this end, an assembled model is on a special background plate with a specific pattern printed on it. In some systems the image-acquiring device may even need to be aligned to a specific angle relative to the toy element assembly for the recognition to take place. Moreover, this prior art method is limited to the construction of models that are planar, parallel to the plane of the background. It would thus generally be desirable to increase the robustness of such methods and, in particular to increase the recognition performance recognising the individual toy construction elements from which the toy construction model is constructed, even for arbitrary 3D models. For example, a sufficiently accurate recognition of the individual elements is desirable for applications where a virtual toy construction model is to be created that as closely as possible corresponds to a real-world 3D toy construction model.
One particular difficulty when detecting individual toy construction elements in a 3D toy construction model is related to the fact that the individual elements may not always be completely visible, or not visible from all sides, as they are connected to other elements of the model that may at least partially conceal the toy construction element.